Abraham Jewett  |  September 17, 2021

Category: Household

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cladding panels and grenfell tower fire
(Photo Credit: BasPhoto/Shutterstock)

Cladding Panels Overview: 

  • Who: A report on the fire safety of cladding panels was released to the BBC after being kept from the public for the past 17 years.
  • Why: Cladding panels likely played a role in the Grenfell Tower disaster in 2017, according to the report. 
  • Where: Flat owners across England who live in homes built with cladding panels may face a higher fire risk or expensive replacements. 

Cladding panels reportedly failed fire safety tests 13 years before causing a 2017 residential building fire — the Grenfell Tower disaster — that injured hundreds and led to 72 deaths. 

The cladding fire safety test results were never released to the public but instead circulated among an industry advisory group, reports the BBC, which said it recently got its hands on the report

Hundreds of thousands of flat owners are now at risk of receiving large bills on account of their properties being built with construction materials deemed to be unsafe. 

Industry, Gov’t Knew of Cladding Panel Fire Danger

The cladding panel fire safety tests were commissioned by the then-Labour government back in the 1990’s, when Parliament began having concerns about the risks of using cladding, reports the BBC, which said none of the five cladding systems that underwent testing for fire safety passed. 

Flat owners are now worried that they must spend thousands of dollars to renovate spaces they were unaware were constructed with dangerous material, according to the BBC, which noted that government funding will not qualify for anyone that lives in a building lower than 18 metres. 

More than three million homes in the UK may now be worthless in the wake of the cladding fire safety reveal, reported Metro. Potentially thousands of flat owners trying to mortgage or sell their homes are also struggling to get fire safety forms now required by builders and banks, reports The Guardian

Jonathan Evans, director of major UK cladding supplier Ash and Lacy, told the BBC that withholding the fire safety test results from the public creates bias and puts people at risk. 

“We all proceed along the route of thinking these systems are safer than they are, until there’s a disaster,” Evans said. 

Evans also noted that not releasing the results may have led to the UK government not dropping controversial building material standards, called Class 0. 

During the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster, it came out that the Class 0 standard was much easier to meet than more-strict European classifications, says the BBC. 

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) told the BBC that the cladding fire safety tests were done more for experimental purposes than for checking materials for intrinsic safety concerns, but that it is now planning to step up regulation. 

“We are taking action to improve building safety where successive governments have failed, through our Building Safety Bill, which marks the biggest improvements to building safety in 40 years, with more rights and protections for residents and a £5bn investment to remove unsafe cladding,” an MHCLG spokesperson told the BBC. 

The MHCLG told the BBC that new building safety regulations will be stricter on what materials can be put into buildings over 18 metres, and that products deemed unsafe will be quickly removed from the market. 

An inquiry is set to begin next month that will look into what the government knew about the fire safety risks of cladding before the Grenfell Tower disaster, and what it did about it, reports the BBC. 

Are you a flat owner concerned that your home was constructed using unsafe cladding panels? Let us know in the comments!


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